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Kansas City was held up as a national example of bold thinking when it tried to integrate its schools by making them better than the suburban districts where many kids were moving. The result was one school with an Olympic-sized swimming pool and another with recording studios.
Kansas City was held up as a national example of bold thinking when it tried to integrate its schools by making them better than the suburban districts where many kids were moving. The result was one school with an Olympic-sized swimming pool and another with recording studios.
Is it possible to change the topic title to "Kansas City Missouri Public Schools wants to close half of its schools"? KCMO district makes up less than half of the Kansas City limits. It is not representative of the education that an average Kansas City, Missouri resident gets, and it only covers the inner city.
I advocated for a merger between all of the school districts that serve the city of Kansas City, Missouri, effectively ending the waste that is the KCMO District, and putting the suburbs in charge of the education in the city
Well the school board approved the plan. 5-4 vote tonight.
Quote:
KCMO district makes up less than half of the Kansas City limits.
Huh? First of all, KCMO makes up all of it's own limits. It has to, as a law of physics.
If you meant to say metro area, well, KCMO is in fact the largest single town within the Kansas City Metropolitan Statistical area representing almost 25% of it, at almost 500,000. KCKS is only about 150k and the various suburbs comprising 15 counties make up the rest.
However I don't think everyone is assuming that the headline of this post meant that this decision was affecting all of the metro area or either the state of kansas or missouri. It seems pretty clear not only from the title, but also from the body of the OP and the link, that this is specifically the city of Kansas City Missouri only.
From what I had previously read on this topic, it sounded like KCMO had a lot of half-empty schools and such. Doesn't sound like what has been occurring elsewhere around the country where they are taking over-crowded schools and increasing class sizes from 28 to 38 or something.
This sounds like a move that has to be made for the time being.
I just saw this story on the news. One thing that struck me is that people were hysterical about kids from K-12 being on the same campus. My kids go to a private school where there are 2500 students from PK3-12 on the same campus. I don't understand the hysteria about this issue.
Inner city urban high school kids are much, much different from private school students. Weapons would be a huge concern for me in that age group. Guns and knives are prevalent in the urban area my kids grew up in. Gangs on campus, sexual activity, just all kinds of things I wouldn't want around primary school kids.
Inner city urban high school kids are much, much different from private school students. Weapons would be a huge concern for me in that age group. Guns and knives are prevalent in the urban area my kids grew up in. Gangs on campus, sexual activity, just all kinds of things I wouldn't want around primary school kids.
I am in an urban area NOT in the country (Fort Lauderdale, FL). I wouldn't want my HS kids around guns, gangs and sexual activity either. Why do public schools have so much trouble keeping weapons off campus?
The main point is private vs. public, not whether it's in the country. The private school students in our urban district are not the same type of kids going to the inner city schools.
Think about the most blighted, frightening areas of your city. Now think about the people living there and try to imagine being a high school kid. Drugs, gangs, violence are just a part of daily life. That stuff doesn't stay at home when they go out the door to school in the morning.
I was at my sons school one morning when they had a "lockdown" because adult gang members had been spotted on the campus grounds. They were probably there looking for someone, some student. A lot of the kids feel a need to go to school armed, metal detectors are a joke, kids just ditch stuff and retrieve it later.
It's also kind of funny that someone mentioned that these schools are half empty. Memphis is like that, some schools being torn down because they aren't being used while other schools in the same district have severe overcrowding problems. For some reason busing the kids from the overcrowded schools to the underused ones doesn't seem to be an option. Maybe it's not cost effective, maybe it's political. My kids are out now so I don't keep up with it like I used to.
I remember when that program for the KCMO was first trotted out. Everybody was convinced that throwing a lot of money at the problems and building some super fancy schools was going to pull all the students back in to the city schools. It sounded really good on paper, too bad it didn't work out. Memphis is trying some new thing the Gates Foundation is footing the bill for, to the tune of 20 million dollars. Plus the city is supposed to add another 30-40 million on top of that. I wonder if throwing money at the Memphis schools will work any better than it did in Kansas City.
I was at my sons school one morning when they had a "lockdown" because adult gang members had been spotted on the campus grounds. They were probably there looking for someone, some student. A lot of the kids feel a need to go to school armed, metal detectors are a joke, kids just ditch stuff and retrieve it later.
How do they get on campus? Is there NO security? Around here there are police on every public school campus. Plus you need to pass through a security checkpoint to get into the school. That exists here even in the suburban schools (I live in a large district with inner city and suburban schools).
They weren't in the school, just on the grounds, which is why they put the school on lockdown, to make sure they weren't able to get into the school. Most campuses in Memphis aren't fenced at all.
Security is a lot of cameras, and usually just one officer patrolling a very large campus. Multiple entrances that can't be kept locked at all times. Metal detectors are movable and not used often because of the bottleneck they create. Kids park their cars all up and down the residential streets around the school and when they see that the metal detector has been rolled out a lot of them just leave their weapons in their cars, or they bypass the metal detectors and have their friends let them in, or like I said they just ditch them until later. Pushing 1500 kids through one metal detector in 30 minutes? They are going to miss some stuff.
Visitors are supposed to check into the office, which works sometimes, but other times I've been to the school and had to go looking to find someone to sign me in.
The other HS my son attended was better about their security, and didn't have nearly as many problems with gangs. I think a lot of the types of problems depends on the immediate neighborhood, even in the same district. His schools were only four miles apart but worlds different in atmosphere.
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